The "Mark as missing" option in the Grade editor alerts students to incomplete activities, showing a missing status icon and allowing teachers to assign scores without marking activities complete. Any student or teacher action clears the missing status. It can be used with other grading options like Allow retry but not with Excuse, as they conflict. For assessments, marking as missing automatically allows a retry.
In the Grade editor, the Mark as missing scoring option is designed to give teachers a way to alert students to a missing activity (or a missing part of an activity), usually to encourage the student to take some action to address it (retry where allowed, talk to the teacher, etc).
When Mark as missing is used for an activity:
- Teachers can return a score without marking the activity as complete, so students know how the missing activity will be scored if they don't address it and activities that require completion for access are not made accessible.
- An icon (a clipboard with an exclamation point) appears with the activity in Grades screens to notify students and teachers.
- A Status: Missing message appears in the activities Grade details screens.
Using Mark as Missing with Other Scoring Actions
After Mark as missing has been assigned to an activity, any action taken by the student (like retrying the activity) or by the teacher (like submitting a score or using the other grading options in the Grade editor) automatically clears Mark as missing with an updated status.
This is because Mark as missing is intended to motivate a student to notice and address the problem of not completing work and a new action should indicate that this has happened.
For example, if a teacher marks an activity as missing, and the student talks to the teacher and they decide together that the student will retry the activity. The teacher simply has to select Allow retry, and the missing status is removed.
Use the following rules when using Mark as missing.
- Any activity can be marked as missing, whether submitted or not.
- If you want to provide a score with the missing status, enter the score, then select Mark as missing. The status will be saved with the score.
- If you want use Mark as missing without a score, simply select it.
- If you want to use Allow retry or Override complete with Mark as missing, assign one of those first. Then, return to the Grade editor for the activity and use Mark as missing. The initially assigned option and Mark as missing are saved to the activity. If you do it in the reverse order, Mark as missing is cleared.
- Note: Assessment activities are an exception to this rule in relationship to the Allow retry option. For Assessments, selecting Mark as missing automatically provides a retry.
- The Mark as missing and Excuse options cannot be used together (as they have conflicting meanings), so assigning one when the other is selected always clears the first one. Excuse means the student is not required to complete the activity for one reason or another.
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